Vogelsong roughed up again in SF Giants’ third loss in four games

The 2013 season is closing in on the quarter pole. The words “it’s early” still carry truth but do not roll off the tongue as easily now. So the time has come to ask what is wrong with Ryan Vogelsong and what the Giants plan to do about it?

Vogelsong is not the only starter struggling. Far from it. But the others are showing signs of hope. Those are more difficult to spot with Vogelsong, who stumbled again in Thursday night’s 6-3 series-opening loss to the Braves at AT&T Park.

In the Giants’ third loss in the past four games, the 35-year-old right-hander blew two leads and allowed six runs in 4 1/3 innings, raising his ERA to 7.78.

Vogelsong was chased in a four-run fifth inning that allowed the Braves to overcome a 3-2 Giants lead, Buster Posey providing all the runs on a first-inning RBI single and a two-run homer in the third, both off Julio Teheran.

The inning of Vogelsong’s demise was no surprise. For the season opponents are hitting .500 against Vogelsong, with no strikeouts and 16 of the 36 runs he has allowed. That could be a sign of fatigue, which Vogelsong has denied, hitters adjusting the third time through the lineup, or both.

The Giants were short a man in the bullpen because of Santiago Casilla’s knee injury, but Bochy had no choice to get Vogelsong in the fifth.

So the question becomes, what to do?

Give up on Vogelsong? Hardly.

As bad as his numbers look over seven starts, including nine home runs in 39 1/3 innings, he actually had a worse stretch from mid-August to mid-September last year. In seven games he had a 10.31 ERA with six homers in 29 2/3 innings.

He adjusted over his final three regular-season starts and went undefeated in the postseason, allowing only three earned runs over four starts.

Skip him one start? That would be more likely. The Giants have done it with other starts, to regroup, to get extra work in the bullpen, with some success, and Monday’s offday before a two-game series would allow it.

Vogelsong showed the stuff of old, but not the command and the ability to repeat good pitches.

He struck out the side to start the game and had seven strikeouts after four innings, but he also allowed a Brian McCann homer with a man aboard in the second inning, and fifth-inning triples by Jordan Schafer and Justin Upton.

With Atlanta leading 4-3, two on and one out in the fifth, manager Bruce Bochy had to replace Vogelsong despite being a man short in the bullen with Santiago Casilla’s knee injury. Matters just worsened with Jose Mijares pitching.

Marco Scutaro, who already had an error, could not making a diving stop on a hard McCann one-hopper, and Freddie Freeman scored from second base as the ball skittered away. B.J. Upton, standing at the plate batting 17-for-113 on the season, singled for his sixth RBI and a 6-3 Atlanta lead.

Posey provided the cheers for a crowd of 41,365. He hit an RBI single in the first inning after Scutaro doubled to extend his hit streak to nine games, then hit a hanging 3-2 curveball into the left-field seats after Pablo Sandoval’s two-out single.